Don’t Call It a Rip-Off

On the interior jacket of Eulogy IV, an EP by Chicago black metal band Nachtmystium released in 2004 and reissued by three labels during the subsequent two years, the band's founder and lone constant, Blake Judd, looks like a menace. His dirty blonde hair falls to the middle of his ribs, hidden by a long-sleeve t-shirt that's covered by the pixilated glob of some metal logo. His fists are clenched, and his scowl is set. Near his knees, an ornate font reads, "Azentrius: Guitars and Vocals."

Judd doesn't use this nom de guerre anymore, and on this sunny Saturday afternoon, he doesn't look very threatening either. His hair, once dyed black, is blonde again, chopped well shy of shoulders, and he's sporting shorts. Wearing a faded Pentagram T-shirt, with the logo chipping and peeling and the sleeves cut off at the shoulder, he peers from behind Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. Every few minutes, Judd reaches for another cigarette from his Camel hard pack and sips an iced vanilla latte outside of a Raleigh, N.C. coffee shop.

Tonight, Nachtmystium will open for legendary Southern lords Eyehategod at a nearby metal club, and Judd will, again, be testing a new lineup of the band he's led since he was 16. In its earliest days, Judd made atavistic black metal-- raw and grim, high on history and set on singularity. He didn't really tour. Like Xasthur, Striborg, and Leviathan, he was a bedroom black metal guy, issuing intense packets of darkness every several months through a network of niche labels.

"That's how I did it for the first four years," says Judd, who has gone on to collaborate with his fellow metal hermits Twilight and turn Nachtmystium into a relentless road machine. This year, they've already played more than 80 shows. "But I don't have that weird isolationist attitude in general-- in my personal life or in the band. I like to get out there and experience people and shows and places and things. It's fun."

The air, sun, and experience have been kind to Nachtmystium: 2008's Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. 1 and this year's brilliant follow-up, Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. 2, have imploded the notion of the band. The guitar solos stretch like psychedelic spires now, and the structures often suggest catchy classic rock-- thick, propulsive, and hooky. What's more, two tracks from the new LP, "No Funeral" and "Ruined Life Continuum," are legitimate dance numbers.

Nachtmystium: "No Funeral":

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So maybe, drinking his latte and smoking his cigarettes, Judd does seem like one of the most threatening people in metal today-- threatening, that is, to the notion of what it can and should be.

BJ: Around the time I was 11, I started buying my own records. I got into grunge first. Nevermind came out. I was into Guns N' Roses and Metallica. When I was 11 or 12 years old, I discovered Slayer and then quickly thereafter discovered black metal. I actually heard black metal before I ever heard death metal or anything like that. Spin did this big article in February 1996, which is the reason we're talking right now. It totally changed my life. The first record I bought was the Emperor and Enslaved split [Hordanes Land/Emperor], and I remember thinking there was something wrong with the CD because I'd never heard music that lo-fi before. You turn it on, and it's like static. "Holy shit, what is this?" It was super strange. But it grew from there. I got into death metal but not until I was 16. That's when I started listening to Iron Maiden.

Normally it's the other way around for people, and they discover the more extreme stuff later. But I started off with Burzum and Immortal and Emperor around the time In the Nightside Eclipse was coming out.

Pitchfork: You've described your parents as hippies who turned you on to classic rock. How did they feel about their teenager's obsession with black metal?

BJ: They weren't big fans. I think it kind of scared them a little bit. They were never really scared by anything, but it disturbed them that I was into such negative shit. Little did they know that it would probably turn out to be the most positive thing that's ever happened to me because I found who I was, what I liked and identified with, and what I wanted to do via that music.

I definitely did some stupid shit that I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for as a result of listening to this music as a kid. I had friends of mine that just took it way too seriously. I had friends that had guns and shit like that. It was kind of scary when I was 18 or 19 years old. That's what's intimidating about the genre in general: It cultivates maniacs.

Pitchfork: What was the most dangerous moment for you?

BJ: We had a friend that committed suicide right in front of another friend of mine. He shot himself in the head like 10 feet away from him, and that was pretty brutal. The guy had been pointing the gun at my friend and said, "Stay the fuck back." He sat down and, "Pop." He shot himself with a sniper rifle, and it blew his whole fucking head off of his shoulders. My buddy had to witness that.

I got the phone call at like 3 a.m., and that's when I realized it was all because of black metal and all this, "I'm better than everybody and I don't need to be here anymore." This guy's whole theory was that if he didn't kill himself, he was going to kill everyone around him. Apparently, he fucking meant it.

In the year or two following that incident is when I slowly pulled away and started changing who I was a little bit-- grow up a little and stop living in this real maniacal world of negativity.

Pitchfork: Speaking of negativity, it's been almost a year and a half since Nachtmystium were kicked off of Scion's metal festival for ties to national socialist black metal. What's your reaction to that situation now?

BJ: It was really offensive. What was even more offensive was that they asked us not to say anything about it, and they paid us, trying to keep us from talking about it. It seems that the problem has stopped. We played in Germany, where it's been the biggest issue. We'd been boycotted there a few times before, and we were just there. We played a show in Essen, and we did a festival in Bitterfeld. They were fine. There was no bullshit from any activists.

The fact that people act surprised that a band that comes from underground black metal, that started where we started in a super-cult underground community of tape traders and CD-R demos-- of course a white power guy carried our shit at some point. Hate walks hand in hand with hate, and black metal especially is a genre that is full of white power bands. N.S. black metal is a huge thing. And there are people out there that aren't as sensitive as others that listen to these bands, regardless of if they pay attention to the politics, and therefore the stuff is abundantly found and it's distributed widely amongst underground mail orders and distros. I guess we've gotten to the point where we're in the spotlight enough where those old connections can come back and haunt you from the grave.

Whatever, man: I'm not ashamed of it. If some fucking guy was carrying my tape, I'm happy he was selling it to people. I know for a fact that we weren't the isolated band with a whole shitload of white power bands ever. That was not the case. You could have probably bought a Gorgoroth CD from the same guy.

BJ: I really don't know. Covering Death in June didn't help, but I've met Douglas P. and talked to him myself. He's a homosexual with a uniform fetish. That doesn't seem very white power. Last I checked, white power guys still frown on homosexuality. There have been little provocative things that we've done over the years that don't help, but we spawned from black metal. It's extreme. If you can't handle it, then don't pay attention to it.

Pitchfork: Plenty of bands on that Scion bill have said objectionable things that they might regret, and some of those bands have fairly controversial viewpoints.

BJ: How about 1349 headlining? Their whole trip is Satan and killing Christians and getting rid of them, but that's OK. People from the local churches weren't all up in arms because they are unaware of this music, or they would have been. They're too busy yelling at Marilyn Manson or whatever.

Some politically correct Wolves in the Throne Room new-school dreadhead black metal kid, a little art guy from Brooklyn, probably wrote to them, offended. His leftist fascist feelings were hurt by us. Those people tend to be just as extreme as the people they're supposedly fighting against.

Pitchfork: You spoke out against the charges. How important has that been?

BJ: I am glad that we've been outspoken against it enough that there's one thing I can assure you: The white power people fucking hate us, and they hate that we were labeled as being a part of their shit because of the fact that we openly advocate drug usage and typical debauched activity. I know for a fact that those people don't come out to our shows. They aren't around. They aren't present, and I fucking love that.

Pitchfork: No one's going to like you by the time this is over.

BJ: [laughs] That's all right.

Pitchfork: You've said that the hardest part of making this record was finishing the songs with a drummer because you don't think like a drummer. How so?

BJ: I don't think in time signatures, and when I do, what I write is generally 3/4 or 4/4, the most basic, straightforward stuff. I think that comes from just not being a super-schooled musician. I took music theory in high school and dropped out halfway through the semester because it was ruining music for me. I don't want to think like that. Some people are really into being music-minded and knowing all their scales and how to read music and speak the language. To me, as convenient as that would be to make it easier to communicate with more prolific musicians, I don't want to think of music like a math equation. That's not something I want to study. I didn't want to study it in school, so I played guitar.

"No Funeral" only sounds that way because of the snare sample we chose, and the fact that there is a synth bass following the guitar lead that plays over the whole thing. I don't know, I just never thought we'd make a song that sounds like that. I think it's pretty offensive honestly.

Pitchfork: Why? To whom?

BJ: It's a huge middle finger to the people that like our more metal stuff, that's for sure. But I want people that like what we do that's more extreme to be able to understand and appreciate stuff like that. I think it's equally extreme, but I think it's just extreme in a different way. It's something new, or at least we're trying to make something new here.

Black metal disco. It comes from listening to all these Joy Division knockoff bands and shit like that. The Editors-- I really love the Editors' first album, The Back Room, especially for the drumming on it. That's what we were trying to emulate, to pinpoint a specific album where I'm like, "I want to do something that's rhythmically like this with black metal music over it." I think it works.

Nachtmystium: "Addicts":

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Pitchfork: Did you get into Joy Division or bands that followed them first?

BJ: I got into Joy Division shortly before discovering all of that. Jeff [Whitehead, or Wrest] from Leviathan turned me onto all of that shit when we were doing the first Twilight album back in 2004. There's that real early Interpol stuff, and then I discovered the Editors. I don't have tons and tons of music like that. I pretty much keep to those three bands and maybe a couple of other ones, but I love that stuff. I think it's dark in its own way. When you apply that structure to metal, it forces you to chill it out a little bit and make it a little more listenable. I like that. I like pop music. I'm not going to lie. I was an underground metal guy for 15 years. I kind of just burned out on it. I'm not so into that shit anymore.

Pitchfork: You're a band that's never shied away form the fact that you have influences outside of metal and that you're not afraid to use them. That attitude is oftentimes contraband in metal.

BJ: The fact that we're the outspoken metal band that hails our influences as anything but metal is what makes us provocative to the metal community. It's narrow-minded and restricting, and that's why [some] bands won't matter in 30 years. If I'm going to make music and put my heart and soul into this and dedicate my whole life to it, I want to be making something that 15, 20, 30 years from now, somebody is listening to and that is a staple of the time it came out.

Pitchfork: That attitude-- it should be as pure as possible-- exists in most, if not all, genres. But it does seem extra prevalent in metal. Why?

BJ: I think metal draws dumb people. It's not exactly a thinking man's genre. I know plenty of hyper-intelligent metal people, but at the same time, there's this dumbass, hardheaded, macho attitude associated with it. For younger people, it's like a succubus. It sucked me in, and that's all I wanted to be into. I think it's safe to say that 50% of the record buying metal community is people between the ages of 16 and 25-- people still in their teenage-angsty, early young-adult years. It's easy to gravitate toward something negative as opposed to something positive, especially if you're an outsider.

I was an outcast in school. I was your typical fucking metal kid. It made me feel empowered to be into this stuff. Being an evil dude: You create this false identity of who you really are and hide behind that as a means to deal with your peers and to hide behind your social awkwardness and inabilities and inadequacies. It makes sense why there's that hardliner attitude because it's something that these people can only identify with. That's too bad. It just cracks me up when it's guys that are my age or older.

Pitchfork: There are some very positive moments on Addicts, at least sonically. Not only are there the dance-like tracks, but there's some real, triumphant rock'n'roll climaxes.

BJ: Definitely. I'm not going to hide the fact that I am a happy person-- not to say that there are a bunch of super-fucking-happy songs here, lyrically. But it's more about getting through shit and overcoming things and pushing forward while living in this chaotic world. The soundtrack to that doesn't have to be negative and dreary and dark.

Pitchfork: There's a line in "Then Fires"-- "Live your pain/ Love your stench"-- that seems to be the record's thesis statement. It's a sort of live-through-this moment.

BJ: That's very much what it is. We live with the things that we do to ourselves and others in doing what we've done to ourselves. As far as dealing with addiction and shit like that goes, it's no joke that myself and our earlier guitarist, Jeff [Wilson], have both struggled with serious drug problems and with alcoholism. It's greatly affected relationships-- girlfriends and family and shit like that. We've both dealt with a lot of really great things and a lot of really bad things as a result of the lifestyle we choose to lead. That's what the album's focus is mostly about.

Nachtmystium: "Every Last Drop":

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Pitchfork: Given the extreme nature of a career like this, how do you get away from those problems and concentrate on making music?

BJ: I get through it because I think it's a conscious choice to become a piece of shit. As bad as I've ever had it, I was never in a situation where I was stealing from people or selling my belongings and shit like that. I've always found a way to afford what I need and work it out. But doing this, I have to keep it together enough. The guy who is too fucked up to go out and play his guitar and have fun and have people show up and praise his music and headbang and sing along to his songs is a sad sack of shit. That is a lame attitude to have, and there's no reason to be like that. It should be the most important thing. I'm never going to be the guy that goes, "No, I'm too fucked up. I can't do this anymore. Life is so hard on me."

Shit, man, I've done everything under the sun in abundance for long periods of time-- things that should have made me sick, things that should have fucked my life up more than they did. When the time came when it got out of control, it was, "Done! Knock it off. Take a break." I'm not going to let something stop me from doing what I have to do to keep myself afloat. --Grayson Currin